Behind them, the world broke apart as they ran.
The bare feet of the marked children made golden imprints on the icy ground as they moved through the crumbling landscape like ghosts.
Floating above them, the unmarked girl, screaming, no longer human, her broken eyes leaking emerald fire that burned the trees where it fell.
Jarek held his bleeding hand tightly.
"How far to the coast?"
As Mara was drawn forward by her fused arm, the void-blade hummed like a compass needle.
"Not very far. She is awaiting.
…..
The glass plane had vanished.
All that remained was the actual cave, its walls eroded by the sea, shedding salt and memories.
The skeleton of the Thirteenth Duskheir was kneeling in front of the altar, her rib cage holding the thorn that had been torn from her chest centuries before.
Ethan reached for it.
His fingers slid through the emptiness.
"Not you," said a voice that was not Star's or Duskheir's. "The other half."
…..
It was the boy who fell first.
He was running next to Mara one minute, and then his tiny body trembled, and a golden light burst from his thornmark.
The others came in a wave, kids falling like stringed puppets, backs hunched as something under their skin moved.
Jarek came to a stop.
"What is going on with—"
"The Star is calling them home," Mara gasped. Although her thornmark burned, the corruption was temporarily repelled by the void-blade.
The unmarked girl came down, staring at Mara with emerald fire.
"You cannot outrun a god," the voice inside her said.
Mara bared her teeth.
"Watch me."
…..
Beneath the cliffs, the sea roared, its spray sharp as a knife. Ahead, the ragged mouth of the cave, sprinkled with luminiscent algae that ticked in time with Mara's scar.
Jarek paused at the doorway.
"This is a bad idea."
Mara didn't argue. She went inside.
The air changed. Thick with salt and something older, copper, and turned earth.
The sigils carved on the walls were the same as those on the standing stones, but they were active, their grooves dripping upward against gravity with liquid shadow.
In the middle is the altar.
She was at the altar.
…..
Time had not been kind.
The skeleton had lost much of its human appearance.
Its fingers stretched into talons that resembled roots and were still curled around the ghost of the missing blade, while its bones fused with what appeared to be petrified driftwood.
Its ribs held the thorn, which was brittle and blackened but still gave off a faint glow.
In her hands, Mara's void-blade trembled.
"Place the halves together," Ethan's voice murmured, coming from all directions.
Jarek grabbed her wrist.
"And if that's exactly what the Star wants?"
The laughter of the unmarked girl came closer now, echoing from outside.
Mara made her decision.
She stabbed the skeleton in the chest with the void-blade.
…..
The world came to a stop.
For one moment, Mara was the Thirteenth Duskheir….
… felt her sisters' betrayal as they embraced the hunger
listened to her scream as she ripped the thorn away.
tasted the sea air as she threw it into the air.
Then the vision was broken.
The skeleton crumbled.
Together with Mara's scar, the thorn hummed.
…..
Pain.
Then—
Power.
Mara saw the threads, the eleven broken chains that held the buried hungers together, the thousand brittle ties that bound the Star to this world, and the single thread that was still tight between her chest and the sky.
The unmarked girl came through the doorway.
"Too late," the Star's voice hummed through her.
Mara grinned.
She grabbed the thread and ripped it.
…..
The sky ripped apart.
Not a fissure this time, but a wound.
The connection reversed, allowing the stolen power to flow back into Mara through the thread, causing the Thirteenth Star's eye to bleed black sap. Right into the thorn.
The marked children all screamed at once.
The unmarked girl exploded in a shower of emerald sparks.
And Jarek… remembered.
…..
He was violently taken by the vision.
His ancestor was kneeling in front of the injured Duskheir.
Her bark-skinned hand on his brow.
She whispered. "When the blade returns, you will finish what I started."
The memory burned through generations of lies.
The Ravenscrofts weren't jailers.
They were fail-safes.
…..
Mara's form wavered between woman and something else as she glowed in stolen starlight.
The thorn that was now pounding in her chest had absorbed the void-blade.
She turned to Jarek, her eyes twin pools of liquid night.
"Now you see," she whispered.
Yes, he did.
There was only one way to end this.
Jarek reached for the thorn.